Comment by salad-tycoon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by salad-tycoon | Hacker News Reader

I like Kagi , I do. I like the ranking, I like how I can search for controversial people and not have my intended search target censored by obfuscation. Kagi just gives me the data. That’s great!

I pay the 5 a month but I run out mid month which makes me not use it and breaks the habit and worry. I’m considering the 10 a month but then I think I get 500gb e2ee cloud+email+email hosting+vpn+a couple of other small things from proton for $8.33 a month.

I guess I’m a heavy user, one day supposedly I had >30 searches (that I don’t recall). I want to pay but not that much. So I just learn to live with an inferior product.

So now I’m stuck between wanting to pay more and wanting to outright cancel.

Although sometimes reading HN news updates feels a bit weird/ad like (watch how negative downvotes get greyed out) I enjoy seeing them work on it and wish them the most success.

Ps I do appreciate their ios and mac apps that help with safari. Sadly I think all the spotlight, look up, and Siri searches still get processed out of kagis world. Obviously, not in their control.

Good luck Kagi.

I really hope they keep lowering the unlimited searches price. I'm pretty sure I use way less resources than my $10 pays for, but I just wanted it for the peace of mind - if enough people like me subscribe, they'll probably be able to lower it even more.

alternatively, I don't know how deeply embedded the LLM stuff is in kagi, but I really do not need that, so maybe a plan without that, since that is the stuff that requires a lot of expensive compute.

As mentioned in another comment, a plan without the LLM stuff wouldn't really lower the price, as search is the most costly thing they have, the LLM features are dirt cheap compared to searching. (>2ct per query)

> I’m considering the 10 a month but then I think I get 500gb e2ee cloud+email+email hosting+vpn+a couple of other small things from proton for $8.33 a month.

Just because Proton is a great deal doesn't make Kagi a worse deal. This kind of logic never made sense to me. The products have nothing in common, so why the comparison?

Then, also think about why you're worrying about spending $10 per month on a product that you think is great? Is that an amount of money that has any impact on your current life situation? I think a lot of people can't break the habit that everything on a computer has to be free.

Absolutely. $120/year, to me, is cheap to have a search engine that actually, fundamentally works. That it keeps me out of the Google ecosystem a bit more is a massive added bonus. I pay similar to stay out of gmail and the rest of the G suite.

I get that some people have a different financial situation and I respect that, but the cost seems deeply negligible for the benefits of a tool I use tens to hundreds of times a day.

a solid search engine saves me far more then 120 a year in my time. Even just for work stuff if it saves me an hour or two over the entire course of a year it was worth it

You make good points and I appreciate the frame work. Obviously I am not adversed to paying for things that most consider “free”. The issue ultimately is I’m wary of subscription creep. I keep a very small list of things and 10/month times X amount adds up and without my active spending reviews could ballon quickly.

For me, 5-8 a month I think about less than 9.99+. Probably psychological and financial. Obviously will be different for everyone and isn’t purely rational thinking.

It’s $10. Is there anything you use less frequently than a search engine in your life that you pay $10/month for? Coffee, eating out, etc?

And sure, I hope they lower the price, but for the hundreds of searches I do every month, not dealing with ads in my face is wonderful. And companies need to pay the bills somehow.

FYI Kagi is working on an email offering. Check out #email on their discord.

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